
When considering an indie film like Last Night at Terrace Lanes, one has to take into account that it is not a big-budget Hollywood type of movie. Jamie Nash directed the movie with a low budget which has you scratching your head on some subjects but there touching moments for sure even though they are not exactly home run moments. But then again, even getting a single is something worth celebrating for, and this low-budget slasher turned out to have few of those.
Given that the real Terrace Lanes bowling alley in Frederick, MD shut down its business for five decades recently in May 2022, the film was directed by Nash while other scripts were written by Adam Cesare and Jenna St. John which were all required to complete this movie within eight weeks. Given that a movie like this had a realistic chance of being created is in itself astonishing because it’s something that runs at a breakneck pace with a lot of cult and grime to it and doesn’t care if it gets messy. Even if it never quite hits the riotous notes it wants to hit, there is a go-for-broke attitude and that’s consistent with Nash and the film’s blood and bones.
Yet, it is the neglected bowling center that is used to the fullest in the film, digging into its varieties to help its protagonists remain concealed and wait to live. Taking a little from Robert Resnikoff’s The First Power, a cult is introduced with a map outlining a five-point inverted star with a dot at its base coinciding with several murders committed by them, the final point being Terrace Lanes. This is the point where the cult will complete the star and see the transformation of the cult. whatever it is (the film does not explain that). For this to happen, however, there is a need to remove everyone present in the place, including the father and daughter family of Bruce (Ken Arnold) and Kennedy (Francesca Capaldi).
The friction is evident in this dysfunctional family; for instance, Bruce was with the maintenance and bartending sticks whereas Kennedy showed up with her friend Tess (Mia Rae Roberts) and 2 boys and has been avoiding Bruce’s notice as much as possible. (There is more to the friendship between the two girls Kennedy and Tess which tension the great Nash uses to underscore their scenes. ) But when the cult comes and starts shooting everyone inside the bowling alley, that’s the hour of their special talents (as former members of the same bowling team) being put to use to save their comrades.
As a low-budget film, Last Night at Terrace Lanes has a few spots where it seeks to impress in its filmmaking aspects as well as acting. Francesca Capaldi and Ken Arnold quite literally drive the movie into the wall with hilarious portrayals of two family members who do not see eye to eye. There’s a kind of ferocity and a certain sense of hilarious depth to the character played by Arnold, a person who has suffered the crushing reality of a divorce, a child he has lost touch with, and a job that can be described best as being employed in a dead end alley of a bowling alley yet finds his own quirky man boy ways in everything. On the other hand, Capaldi takes up the role of a teenage rebel and lays it out loud and clear insolently deriding her father and getting away with eye rolls when it is quite the opposite of her being the daughter and him an overly immature man.
Upon entry into the bowling alley, Nash goes all out, aiming for the gore shots while giving some welcome exposition during the lulls. It’s fascinating to see the blend of budgetary constraints and high concept being employed here, some work and many don’t but that’s what the film is all about. Some of the dialogue sequences between our protagonists are quite protracted (and loud) for example, one of the pinsetters would aim at a ‘We’ll get through this and be a family again ending where there are two people at the back desks staring at us and we just suppose how far the bad guys are able to hear. Here, however, everything is again laughed off by various plot devices and plot holes, and mostly they can be forgiven.
Well, there’s the occasional cringe amateurish stuff, like for example seeing supposed live security camera footage of some dude running around even about ten minutes after we saw him getting slaughtered by the cloaked cultists. But it’s balanced out by the fact that the story written on paper takes no prisoners, the highlight of which must be the wannabe actor who plays one of the butt-monkeys begging for his life and not being given such pleasures even after he comes up with some plan to reveal torture. Nash has the audacity to remain the course and not shy away from aspects of the narrative that are likely to offend sensibilities.
That is how a low-budget slasher at the back of the bargain becomes respectable. Not because it can go there, but because it has to go there. This mismatched mishmash of source material and ’cult’ throwback (look for another cult film called The Void which takes place in, you guessed, the building that is about to close down) as well as survival horror may not be the most elegant or the most polished but then again, who is looking for it? Certainly not me: I have done a project or two like this and even though I could understand the different styles and shortcuts that were employed, it was still entertaining to watch. Last Night at Terrace Lanes pays respect to a town’s icon in a brilliant manner and in the process, enjoys the bloody mayhem. Somewhere between the touching category of ‘the kind of movies’ you would shoot over the weekends with your friends to having enough strength to overcome the low-scale display of the entertainment’s hustle, it is an example of the best form of art: making films any time, anyway, and with any available means.
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